The Internet and the City: The Coming Revolution

The Internet has changed human life a lot over the past decade, but it has not yet revealed its full potential, as it is expected to change the nature of cities and things over the past decade, and the signs of the “Internet of Things” tell us the revolution, which will reach, not between  Only, but between humans, everyday processes, data, and things, a revolution is already underway in business, government, and academia, and is poised to reshape our lives in the cities we live in in the decades to come. 

The Internet is currently available to about half of the Earth’s population, and it will be available to two-thirds of them by the year 2020, and since there are now 13. 5 billion devices connected to the Internet, this number will reach 50 billion devices in 2020, and this large doubling will be the result of the Internet of Things, and not the spread of traditional devices that Internet can be accessed such as smartphones, computers, tablets, and even the following devices such as clocks, railways, trash cans, car engines, etc.

Internet and utilities

More than half of the Earth's population now lives in nearby cities or suburbs, a number that will increase with the acceleration of development in the developing world, particularly in China, India and Latin America.  It will require governments and corporations to treat megacities differently than they traditionally do. The means of managing services and infrastructure will not work and it will need a new Internet-based revolution more than ever before to enable these cities to continue to thrive in a new way. 

For example, garbage will be one of the most important problems facing cities in the future, as its quantities are expected to increase with population growth, and therefore the costs of waste collection and management around the world will reach more than 350 billion dollars by 2025, and these costs can be reduced Of course, using the Internet, especially by connecting the entire city's garbage cans to the Internet, so that a small device inside will inform the local authority when they are full and need to be emptied, and daily garbage truck drivers will have a smart map that only goes to the streets where the cans are full, Instead of the traditional way that wastes time and money. 

Moreover, with regard to water distribution networks, it will be possible in the future for the competent institutions to know when their infrastructure needs to be modified and repaired, by placing small sensors in the water pipes that send signals when they are broken, which is a development that must be applied by the United States, which has much of its infrastructure nearing completion, and in the coming decades will need a new revolution on its dilapidated infrastructure. 

Of course, one important area to benefit from these developments will be general lighting. Using technology to turn on the lights at night, rather than in the morning, by sensing sunlight wouldn't seem like enough to save energy. Switch to using a device that detects motion near any street lamp post. It turns on suddenly, and then turns off if there is no movement in its vicinity, which is a more accurate and economical technology of course, especially since the detection of sunlight sometimes does not work effectively due to changing environmental conditions, and such a development would be able to significantly reduce rates the crime.

Moreover, with regard to reading electricity meters, instead of going through individual homes as is the case currently, the Internet will allow communication between different power lines of the same building or even the same street, which will initially save on the consumption of individual meters, and will make the process of measuring electricity consumption more Efficient and easier for the concerned local authorities or institutions. 

The world of traffic is also one of the areas that will be profoundly changed after the Internet of Things revolution, the results of which many aspire to see in lowering transportation costs and reducing pollution at the same time.  $120 billion is wasted parking in crowded places. Traffic alone, while cars looking for parking spaces cause 30% of traffic jams, and thus contribute significantly to pollution, what will the Internet do? What did the city of San Carlos, California, do, placing internet-connected sensors in parking spaces that send information to motorists about available spaces without them having to search for a long time?

Bus station in Barcelona

In all of this, it will be possible for citizens to use the Internet to know whether roads are crowded or not, in order to avoid increasing congestion and improve traffic efficiency, and they will also be able to access and know certain applications for using public transport.  What buses are available and when they are expected to arrive, and whether a taxi ride is faster. Now bus or bike etc is what the city of Barcelona in Spain has done smart screens installed at bus stops so you can see bus timetables and a map showing where it is vs the nearest place to use the bike instead of getting extra information about The area you are in. 

Smart City: Barcelona as a model

Therefore, it is the smart city as it is called now, which integrates computer systems with traditional infrastructures, to provide its citizens with a more efficient, less expensive and less polluted life, and it already exists now, because the number of smart cities today is 21, and by 2025 it is expected to exceed  Currently, the most prominent examples of smart cities are Barcelona and Songdo in South Korea.

The city of Barcelona began implementing the Internet of Things years ago, and it is expected to save more than three billion dollars through the efficiency of new systems, and improve communication between the citizen and all of this, Barcelona is currently broadcasting free Wi-Fi in several places that citizens use wherever they are, which makes The European Union prompted the city to be declared "Europe's Most Innovative City" this year, and also made it one of the few European cities to have a budget surplus as a result of saving a significant portion of the costs of traditional procedures used by cities in these

Last year, the European Union declared Barcelona "the most creative city in Europe," and Fruchon magazine named the city's mayor, Javier Trias, one of the world's 50 most important leaders, "transforming a city known for its cultural richness into one of the smartest in Europe.  The world, with partnerships with well-known technology companies, Cisco and Microsoft, and the presence of a new technology service center under construction that will improve the relationship of citizens through their phones only with the institutions that govern them. 

On the other side of the earth, South Korea has also begun to apply this model to Songdo, a new city that will be built according to the rules of the Internet of Things in all its fields, from healthcare, daily management, transportation, and education.  and security, which are services that Korean citizens will connect to from home by clicking a button on their phone or computer to plan their daily commute from the bus station to work at the hospital in the city center to school, etc. 

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With the spread of the smart city model, many expect that the streets will become safer and the lives of citizens will be smoother in terms of daily travel and dealing with government institutions, and the surrounding environment will become less polluted, while local governments will become less polluted.  Taking advantage of the lack of budgets to manage the daily affairs of its residents, thus reducing the deficit or diverting the surplus to invest in other areas.